


Correspondence

by adiduck (book_people), Persephone_Kore



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Letters, Reconciliation, warning: mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Kore/pseuds/Persephone_Kore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agatha decides that even if she's not planning to back down about driving Castle Wulfenbach out of Mechanicsburg airspace, it might be worth letting the Baron know she doesn't really want anybody hurt. Klaus wouldn't be impressed with this as a gesture of reconciliation, but he can't resist the puzzle of why "Lucrezia" is writing to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Correspondence

* * *

Agatha walked into the new passage the Castle had opened up, then hesitated, turned, and looked back into the sky. 

Well, she _hadn't_ wanted trouble with the Baron. On the other hand she wasn't about to back down now. But maybe she should... clarify her position. She dug into her pockets before she left.

* * *

Klaus drummed the fingers of his less damaged hand irritably on the mattress. Castle Wulfenbach was under attack, Gilgamesh was _still_ missing, and Sun had just moved him yet again after the last set of assassins and he was more than a little sore. 

Even DuPree was flagging. Klaus's attention sharpened as he realized a clank had gotten in. 

It was a small thing, and somehow despite being maybe a decimeter tall it looked both familiar and _annoyed_ as it dusted itself off with a roll of paper. Klaus's mind snagged on the puzzle of those two qualities, and he didn't direct DuPree's attention to it before suddenly recognizing it as similar to the little bombs that had flooded out of the circus. 

She'd sent it to kill him. No, that was idiotic, she'd want to use him. It was carrying a message. It would give him orders. But he was almost certain that revenants were controlled by voice. 

He needed information. 

He let it give him the note. 

_Herr Baron,_

_Despite what happened at the circus, I don't actually want to fight you. On the other hand, I can't say I want your flagship looming over my town much more than I do Pinkie's. The Castle might have got a little carried away, but I told it not to kill anybody._

_I actually am sorry about the chicken house, even if you were trying to kill me at the time. I hope you get better soon. I'm sure Gil is worried about you._

_Agatha Clay Heterodyne_

Klaus wasn’t sure what he’d expected of a note from Lucrezia poised in a position of power within Castle Heterodyne, but it certainly had not included a claimed lack of intent to permanently damage Castle Wulfenbach. 

Also, there was a disturbing lack of gloating. In fact, the speech pattern within the note did not match Lucrezia’s in the slightest. The handwriting was... actually familiar, if not quite Lucrezia’s either. He recalled it on a number of Beetle’s reports through the years.

She was disguising her identity again. Why, when he already knew it? She’d sent the message in letter form with a clank. Had she feared interception? The clanks had proved adept at entering an area unnoticed, considering this one had managed to sneak into the hospital....

The mention of Gil was obviously a ploy of some sort. Blackmail? Surely she’d know him better than that. But it appeared Gil was not currently with her, which was at least something.

Was she attempting to propose the alliance she'd spoken of? Why, when she could have sent a recording instead of a note?

Why did she want Castle Wulfenbach and its occupants intact? She had clanks that could sneak into highly secure areas. Modifications of the wasps she used on him, perhaps? Single, difficult to detect wasp transporters were a terrifying thought. Worse yet, there were revenants aboard -- known and quarantined, but the damage _one_ had done.... He needed to order a hard shift to radio communication as soon as possible.

Honestly, he also should alert DuPree to the clank currently sitting beside the bed, and ask to be moved to a more secure area.

He stared at the clank. It cocked itself as though in question.

He flipped the paper over and reached for a pencil, left near his chart on the table beside his hospital bed. If Lucrezia was after a clarification of his position, he could certainly comply.

 _The alliance you demanded last time we spoke might be more convincing if you didn't attack my Castle,_ he wrote. Sudden changes in his plans and tactics might prompt her to send more effective commands, and he wasn't yet certain what would be secure _enough_. Still, he half wished DuPree would notice and intercept the note, and yet his hands moved automatically to conceal it when she looked his way. 

Klaus felt sweat prickle on his scalp. He could speak again, after her command to silence him. He could warn everyone that she was Lucrezia, not that they seemed to be _listening_. But now that he'd written _demanded_ , now that he was thinking of it as revealing that she could command him.... 

...He was going to have to be very careful. But that did give him some ideas. 

_I know what you're up to, Lucrezia,_ he added, although he could really stand to know more, and then signed his own name in a quietly vicious fury and gave the paper back to the clank.

* * *

Agatha wasn't sure what she'd expected as a result of her scribble. She'd tried to be polite -- Lilith would have wanted her to be polite -- but if the Baron would only be satisfied with submissive, she couldn't give him that anymore. 

Her little clank returned with the message not so very much later, looking rather smudged from its trip through town, but she was busy. Tarvek and Violetta, Gil invading the Castle, Tarvek collapsing... she didn't get a chance to read until after the surgery, and was really wishing she could give _him_ to the clank to take back to the hospital instead. Maybe she could build something like that.... 

She stripped off the bloody gloves and winced to find the outside of her bandages contaminated -- of course, the Castle had bitten right through the leather. She might need to see if there was another pair of work gloves around. As soon as that was changed, she sat down, head swimming with fatigue, and unrolled the note. Oddly it was on the back of her scrap of paper -- had the Baron been in that much of a hurry, or didn't they let him have paper in the hospital? 

Agatha swallowed a snort at that mental image and started reading. 

And woke all the way back up. 

Alliance? Demanded?

Convincing?

**Lucrezia?**

Black _fire_ , she'd woken up with the locket on and him behind her, he'd been talking to Lucrezia, no _wonder_ he'd tried to kill everybody. (Lars, oh, Lars.) It occurred to Agatha in a vague and distant way that it was irrational to be this angry at Lucrezia for interfering with a conversation and getting Lars killed, more than for all the lives she'd destroyed nineteen years ago, but most of her didn't care. "Paper," she snapped. 

Von Zinzer and Violetta looked confused. 

"Get me paper, there must be something -- a notebook that's not used up, give me --" She found paper, found a pen, discovered all the ink was dry, and went back to her pencil stub before her fury could finally erupt into writing.

* * *

Klaus wasn't sure what to expect from his gambit, but he left the arrangements he'd already made in place and waited. Gilgamesh resurfaced, only to declare for the Heterodyne Girl and enter the Castle with the expressed intention of aiding her. This, reportedly, after he had fought her Skifandrian companion, ripped all her clothes off, inexplicably showered the streets in cutlery, and declared himself the Storm King. Klaus tried not to groan audibly but did insist on getting back into his clank. 

When the little round device found him again, it bore a larger sheet of paper ripped along one edge, with holes punctured through it here and there. The handwriting had gone jagged and it had evidently been written in a towering rage. 

_**I AM NOT LUCREZIA!**_ This was without preamble, underlined several times and the exclamation point had torn the paper. _Her servants forced her into my head, but I'm not. If you think I'm happy about finding out my mother is the Other, and tried to enslave Europa, and took over my body, and was hiding hive engines and revenants and --_ Angry scribble, half rubbed out and mostly smudged. 

_I was trying to tell you that but they got into my message and changed it. I was trying to get to you for help \-- well, I thought you'd probably kill me -- but when I got control again you were trying to kill all my friends._

_I'm not her. Maybe you should be worrying about the Geisterdamen she sent out of Sturmhalten._

_Agatha Heterodyne_

Klaus Wulfenbach had listened to Lucrezia Mongfish rant a great deal over the years, had listened to her defend her position and outright deny involvement and deflect attention like a master puppeteer -- had fallen for it more times than he would care to admit, at least for a while.

He had no idea what game she was playing. Even in situations where Lucrezia genuinely feared interference from discovery, she had never been very good at leaving off an opportunity to gloat. She’d failed to do that even before sending him to Skifander, although to be fair she had no reason to believe he’d be able to do anthing about it. It was possible she had been attempting to gloat whilst remaining in character when she listed off all the ways she’d interfered in Europa and in the life of her daughter, but the phrasing was wrong, the handwriting messy and jagged... Lucrezia would have written and rewritten the note until it looked pristine. This page was littered in smudges and punctures.

Not only that, but the letter was not nearly as analytical as he would expect from Lucrezia -- not after as long as she’d had to respond. She hadn’t attempted to bring up Gilgamesh again -- perhaps because he hadn’t mentioned it? More worrying, she hadn’t alluded to... to his current situation at all, even though he had done so. It was as though she’d missed the reference entirely.

She’d brought up the people she’d been with -- well, they’d been her protectors, but even so it was a rather weak argument for her response. Lucrezia tended towards the military strategy of giving orders from the back. A threat to the people guarding her was... actually, a reason Bill or Barry would have given for decimating a military force with a circus caravan. She could be attempting to appeal to him through alluding to them --

Why was she making such an effort when she didn’t have to?

...Also, that last deflection was just sloppy. It came off more like a sullen teenager than an actual suggestion. Not that Lucrezia couldn’t be childish, of course, but this was going a little far.

He'd told Gilgamesh that Lucrezia was a consummate actress, yes, but something in him balked at the idea that she was doing this. He'd _recognized_ her. She'd thrown over the game and admitted it, gleefully, once he couldn't do anything to stop her. 

Why bother now? Because the notes might be intercepted? She could have secured them better. He could think of three ways without trying. Although admittedly, the little delivery clank was impressively elusive to have reached him twice. 

What could be accomplished by trying to convince him she was... well... the teenager she was inhabiting? 

And should he pretend to believe it?

Should he respond at all, for that matter?

Klaus frowned at the page, considering. Truthfully, any time Lucrezia spent responding to him was time she would not be furthering her own plans, whereas his preparations were by necessity marching on without him. It was a... rather small thing, but he was hardly doing much else between reports while he stayed bedridden with Sun breathing down his neck. It appeared that Lucrezia was content to continue the writing charade at the moment, which made correspondence with her as relatively safe as it could be, and perhaps he could glean a bit of her plan in the bargain.

And, truth be told, he was curious. He’d been wrong about “Agatha Clay” before, and he hated to be wrong.

He had been looking for a challenge, hadn’t he?

He reached for the pencil.

* * *

Agatha became aware of a rather exasperated dinging noise while she rummaged through the lab for anything useful (besides the death ray) to take with her. Moloch flapped a towel at her little clank. "Stop it. How long has that been back?" she asked. 

"Oh, uh, a couple hours? Did you want it? It kept trying to poke you and you, uh--" He pointed at the hole in the wall. 

Agatha sighed and beckoned to the clank. "I'll take it with me. It's an assistant. I've had it running messages, although honestly, they're not much help so far." They also raised questions. For example, did Baron Wulfenbach not actually _sleep_ in the hospital? Also, that was her own handwriting on the outside of the roll of paper. The rather battered paper, she noted with some chagrin. Why would the Baron keep reusing her paper? He had an Empire! Granted, he was in _her town_ , but most people didn't know or believe that yet, and he had his own people there. Surely they could get him fresh paper. 

Not that this was a particularly formal correspondence, but there was still something odd about the Baron in the seat of his strength writing back to her in pencil on used paper. She considered and discarded the idea that it was some sort of slight against Lucrezia. It would just be kind of... petty. And undignified. And it would have been more comfortable to write on paper that somebody else hadn't already dug into.

She didn't have a lot of time to spare -- Tarvek was in a bad way -- but she could probably spare a little. Even if she was no longer holding out much hope that this would make things safer for anybody. (She felt silly for hoping it in the first place.) The _first_ thing she did when she got some privacy was ask the Castle how Gil was doing. The second, after it stopped babbling about yurts, was to unroll the sheet of paper. 

_Miss Clay,_ it began, and Agatha eyed it, because that avoided either calling her Lucrezia again _or_ acknowledging her as the, or even a, Heterodyne. _I am not sure what purpose is served by convincing me that you are a young, inexperienced Spark with a violently loyal Castle instead of a dangerously capable Spark with a violently loyal Castle, but let's say for a moment that I accept your assertion that you are not Lucrezia Mongfish. Is there a particular reason you are continuing this correspondence? What do you want?_

_Baron Klaus Wulfenbach_

Agatha leaned her head against her hands, letting the heels of her palms press into her eyes until she saw stars behind the lids. What did she _want_?

_Herr Baron,_

_Oh, where do I start? I want the Other out of my head, even if you don't believe me. I want everybody safe from her and safe from you, not to mention every random idiot who thinks this is a good time to try to take the town. In fact I want everybody to stop trying to kill each other, and for the people I care about to stop running around trying to get themselves killed! _

_I want the Castle to function properly at something besides attacking people and rhapsodizing about the Mongols, and for Tarvek Sturmvoraus to be back at the hospital where he belongs (I can't decide if I'm more annoyed that your people _lost_ him or that they _shot_ him), and for your son to go somewhere safer than this and stop embarrassing me. While I'm at it, I'd like a hot dinner and about a week-long bath with  nobody speculating about my love life!_

She stared at the paper for a moment, then added more calmly and rather ruefully,

_Most of which isn't likely to be accomplished by writing to you, actually. As you clearly don't believe I'm not Lucrezia, I guess none of it is. I have no idea why I'm doing this anymore and less of one why you're answering. I can't even say I haven't got anybody else to complain to._

_Agatha Heterodyne_

* * *

Klaus hated to be wrong and was facing the possibility that he had just made a deadly mistake. 

_What do you want?_

Why had he thought it would be a good idea to ask that? He'd practically invited her to send back orders in a form he couldn't ignore. 

He reminded himself that, rationally, it shouldn't make a difference. Probably shouldn't. She could have sent a voice recording in the first place. She could have been testing the waters, and revealing that she could get messages to him at all might have been his first error. 

It might help if he had anything else to think about. Technically he did: he was issuing instructions in the hope of mitigating any damage she might do later. But there was only so much he _could_ do, even in the clank, with his body struggling to heal and Sun insisting he let it. Maybe a healing engine -- but then he couldn't do _anything_ for that critical period of time -- 

He still felt like he was doing nothing. Drained as he was, he wanted to be up and moving; he never had liked _having_ to work though other people, no matter how useful it was as an option. They might do it wrong.

As he might have done. 

To make matters worse, his mind kept circling back to Gil. He had purposely left him out of the most recent letter to Lucrezia, as she hadn't mentioned him and he certainly did not want her deciding that was an avenue to pursue after all, but the lack of contact was worrying. Either he was with Lucrezia and did not want to or was not able to contact him (and he had plenty of proof now that Lucrezia _could_ should she wish to), or he was _not_ with her and... therefore trapped in a mad Castle Heterodyne with no form of communication.

Honestly, Klaus wasn’t sure which option was worse.

The little clank messenger slipping in under the heels of a departing nurse and darting under the sheet was almost a welcome relief, although it had moved fast enough that Klaus hadn’t noticed whether it was carrying anything. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, considering one’s point of view, DuPree’s eyes were directed at the nurse herself instead of the woman’s shoes.

Klaus waited an agonizing half an hour until she’d stepped out to speak to a guard before reaching under the sheet and waving a hand for the note.

He hadn’t quite been aware of how tense he was until he felt a page settle into his palm and relaxed. 

Of course, then he read the letter.

DuPree chose that moment to open the door to come back in, of course, forcing him to hide the damn thing and try to look like he wasn’t having illicit correspondence with -- well, with someone in Castle Heterodyne, that at least was certain -- so he didn’t get the opportunity to respond the way he most wanted.

Which was to spend the next five to ten minutes rereading the letter in bemused confusion.

This not only didn't sound like Lucrezia, he was starting to think it didn't sound like anyone Lucrezia would imagine, let alone pretend to be. Even if she were attempting to sound like her young, overwhelmed daughter, some of the things that “Agatha Heterodyne” considered important were things he couldn’t picture Lucrezia Mongfish even _considering_.

Objecting to herself would be an obvious extrapolation from claiming she was the original Agatha and Lucrezia herself an invader. It would even be the obvious claim to make if the one writing to him was, instead, the original and a willing host. Wanting everyone safe -- yes, that could be a ploy. Lucrezia was familiar with the idea.

He did have to admit that rhapsodizing about the Mongols was perhaps not really an essential function of Castle Heterodyne and might plausibly exasperate either Lucrezia or her hypothetical daughter. 

And he could well imagine anyone might want a bath after a few days in Castle Heterodyne, possibly even before it was broken. On the other hand he was fairly sure Lucrezia had always rather _enjoyed_ having people speculate about her love life. 

Then there was the matter of who she’d chosen to mention specifically in the note. One of those people had been Gil; that could be a reminder that she knew about him, or at least that she hadn’t forgotten whose son he was, but the implication that she wanted to get _rid_ of such a useful tool for Gil’s _own safety_ certainly worked counter to Lucrezia’s usual methods. The other had been Sturmvoraus, and... well, that was a puzzle in and of itself.

Klaus hummed as DuPree mimed that she was headed to the facilities. He watched her stalk to the door and drag in a random soldier to stand guard in her absence (and very clearly threaten him with dismemberment if he failed to stop any assassinations or escape attempts -- whatever else you wanted to say about DuPree, she always managed to get _that_ point across regardless of her current ability to speak), turning the problem mentally.

Why return to someone who’d shot you point blank in the back without warning?

If he went with the theory that this was some elaborate ploy by Lucrezia, the answer was obvious: she’d sent one of her little clanks with a recorded message, and he had been unable to resist. The question became why Lucrezia had wanted a servant _back_ when she’d already attempted to dispose of him. Easier to keep an eye on him in the Castle, perhaps? Then why not summon Klaus the same way? For that matter, why mention him to Klaus at all?

The other option was that Agatha Heterodyne was telling the truth about her current condition as sometimes-vessel for the Other, and Sturmvoraus had known and gone to help her. Considering all of the other circumstantial evidence building up, this was increasingly becoming the simplest and most elegant option.

So what did Klaus want to do with that knowledge? What did it change?

...Well, to be honest, not much. Less than he'd like it to. Doubtless, far less than _she'd_ like it to, but -- it wasn't as if he'd ever wanted to be at war with Bill's child. Wanted to hear _Heterodyne_ and think _threat_. But she was, and it was as much or more because of the reputation Bill and Barry had won (that had helped him, sixteen years ago) than because of her own Spark or even the town she was trying to claim. 

Agatha Heterodyne was a threat well before she managed to get the Other installed in her head. The way the students on Castle Wulfenbach had responded to her even after a short time, the way that Sturmvoraus and Gil had rushed to her aid, even the way that circus had protected her and fought for her indicated that she had inherited all of the Heterodyne charisma. On top of that, she was an inexperienced but powerful Spark with command of one of the best armies in Europa (which he only hoped was mostly as far away as it was supposed to be), a murderous, loyal Castle that he suspected she might have the ability to actually _repair_ and... Mechanicsburg.

That, combined with the fact that she _did_ at least have Lucrezia as an occasional visitor in her body, made her extremely dangerous.

But... perhaps it placed her back in a position to be reasoned with.

Ironically, if he took her at her word, now he had to deal with the likelihood that she thought _he_ was working for Lucrezia, as Barry had inexplicably gone around warning people. Judy and Punch had probably told her --

\-- Or had they? Judy had started to insist that Agatha didn't know... something. The students flocking to her defense, too, had claimed she hadn't known she was a Heterodyne. Her attempt to declare her parents by their aliases made slightly more sense if she'd honestly believed he was mistaken than if she'd thought of him all her life as a former friend and now traitor who _ought_ to recognize them on sight.

Of course, nobody had to have heard it from Barry Heterodyne to suspect Klaus of being the Other's minion, or the Other himself. It was a common enough rumor as soon as he stopped being the first hope they'd seen since the Heterodyne Boys went missing. 

And yet... her second letter. If that had not been Lucrezia, scoring the paper, who wrote 'I was trying to get to you for help'.... 

His current guard was easier to deal with than DuPree's silent suspicion. For one thing, he hadn't been at the circus to see the little bombs. Klaus requested pen and paper as if there were nothing untoward going on and was settled in with it, even propped up slightly in the bed, and had covered the first sheet of paper with notes on how to improve his medical clank before DuPree returned. She gave this a cursory glance (noting, he could only presume, the lack of any obvious new destructive features) and then turned her attention to the ingresses to the room and made a peculiar squeaking noise that Klaus identified after a moment as a shut-mouthed yawn. 

"I think you'd better take a sleep shift," he said. "Things have calmed down a little, anyway. I'll probably survive."

She scowled at him, but she let herself be replaced. 

After that, pulling out the letter for reference was a matter of a quick bait and switch.

Determining how to address the recipient of his note was considerably more difficult.

 _Lady Heterodyne,_ he finally started, deciding that if he was going to make an appeal to the ruler of Mechanicsburg he may as well do it properly.

He paused for another minute and then added, _I think we'd both do well to remember that assumptions often lead to incorrect conclusions._

_To address your other demands in reverse order—_

_I can at least promise you that I have no intention of discussing your love life in these letters, unless you yourself make it an issue. I am somewhat less well positioned to offer you dinner or a bath, considering both of our current locations. My apologies._

_I also suspect that I am not the best source of information on making my son do much of anything. I am fairly certain I ordered him to stay away from the Castle, and yet he appears to be inside it embarrassing young women. That said, I claim no responsibility for Sturmvoraus’s escape or injury. The worst of his injuries were sustained among Sturmhalten forces or, I suspect, during his escape from the hospital. Considering I have not yet managed to escape myself, he is doing far better than I at the moment._

_To be blunt, many of Castle Heterodyne's legitimate functions involve attacking people, although I'm not sure it normally rhapsodizes about the Mongols. I’ve been attempting repairs for years, and while some progress appears to have been made, without the Castle itself coherent and capable of recognizing its assistants, it’s impossible to tell how much further there is to go._ He paused, thinking. The truth was that his lack of progress may have had a great deal to do with the fact that no Heterodyne was present. Telling her that, however, was far more likely to convince her to stay and fully regain control of the Castle, which obviously could not be allowed. He settled on, _Its instability is one of the reasons why I would much prefer someone other than an untried Heterodyne at the helm of its repairs,_ before moving on to the next point.

 _I have been trying for the past sixteen years -- actually, most of the past forty -- to get people to stop trying to kill themselves and everyone else. Of course, the people I care about have, for the most part, apparently decided that I am an enemy, so I cannot say I’ve been much more successful than you at keeping them safe._ He paused again and glared at the sentence. Hrm... too bitter sounding, perhaps. Leaving it in may remind the girl of their mutual connection to her parents, but -- no, it was petty, but he did not want Agatha Heterodyne’s pity. He struck the sentence.

_To that end, there is very little I can do to keep people safe from me that I am not already doing. Inconvenient for you though it may be, I am afraid I have invested too much time and energy into the Empire to simply stop defending it to the best of my ability on request. As things stand right now, your... tenant is a danger to not only the Empire, but the entirety of Europa and every living thing in it._

_If what you say about the Other being installed in your head is true, I urge you to surrender yourself and come to the hospital, before whatever method you are using to contain her fails. You indicated in the message before last that you were coming to me for help. Allow me to extend the offer now, before either of us can be forced to take drastic steps. This facility is the best in Europa, and from it you would have access to the best care and innovations science has to offer._ He hesitated, one more time. Well, he’d come this far... _You will not be harmed if there is any other way to ensure the safety of Europa._

He signed with his name, and then slipped the letter under the covers to the clank while his guard wasn’t looking. The next time the door was open, the messenger slid from the medical clank and was gone.

* * *

Electrical systems, check! Drainage and filtering system, check, mind displacement equipment, check, that had other potential utility that could be _very_ interesting, yes, and applicable to her personal situation, but focus, focus, she wasn't the one dying. Tarvek on the slab, shackles, electrodes, monitoring sensors, coolant systems.... 

Now where was Gil? Agatha paused, tapping the wrench against her thigh and humming to herself. He'd gone off with von Zinzer and... hm... probably best to get this out of the way... she absently gave Violetta a few last directives and plucked the note from her messenger clank. 

Fresh paper this time. Foolscap for note-taking, not stationery, but nice. The heightened senses of Spark-fugue (the locket did not mute her senses back to their previous level any more than it did her mind, she noticed) may have made it seem nicer than it was; she stripped off a glove to feel it as she unrolled the letter. 

_Lady Heterodyne_ gave her an irrational little thrill. It might not mean _much_ \-- worse yet, it could actually mean Lucrezia -- but it did. She read the next sentence twice. Was he actually considering her identity? Or even pretending to? 

It quickly became apparent that the Baron was making fun of her for taking his last question as an excuse to rant. On the other hand, he did seem to be talking _to her_. Including --

Really. Really? Surrender? Her? All right, yes, she'd considered it, but that was before -- the rage and despair she'd felt at the circus before she realized the locket really _was_ keeping Lucrezia in check brushed her mind, and no, she couldn't think about -- she couldn't let herself go that far. The Castle would be all too happy to 'destroy his whole army,' not that that had ever been possible, it wasn't in reach now either anyway. But she was the Heterodyne and she would not be _penned_. Not again. She would not be shut away from herself. She would not be locked away from people who needed her. And she would not be Dr. Dim. 

_Herr Baron,_ she wrote, on the other side of his letter this time, 

_Do you remember what happened the last time we met? The time before that? How about Beetleburg? I don't want to come anywhere near you! Every time I do, somebody I love ends up in pieces!_

_I was going to ask you for help when the alternative seemed to be letting Lucrezia do whatever she pleased, through me. She was taking over every time I lost concentration, and it was hard to get it back, and I can't actually heterodyne constantly. Anything was better than that, even having holes drilled in my head._

_But she can't do that anymore -- and maybe I have you to thank for that already, you and Uncle Barry, because she hasn't been able to since she put my locket back on. I doubt that's going to fail any time soon. It didn't fail to keep me stupid for thirteen whole years. I'm too strong for it now, but she isn't. _

_I never asked you to stop defending the Empire. Don't ask me not to defend my town. You might be more reassuring if Gil didn't seem to think you were going to destroy this place as soon as he sets foot out of it. I tried to send him and Tarvek back to the hospital, but he decided a si vales valeo procedure was a better risk! And I think he's coming back finally, so that's all I've got time for. _

_Agatha Heterodyne_

* * *

All things considered, the messenger clank returned much faster than Klaus had thought it would. That, Klaus decided, eyeing the clank, was a bad sign. Especially considering that the main point of the last note was that she should simply come herself, and her response appeared to be messily scrawled on the back of his.

He sighed, braced himself for disappointment, and opened the note.

Then he put the note down and took a few deep breaths before continuing.

The girl had apparently forgotten that Klaus might be just as upset as she had been about Doctor Beetle, not to mention Punch and Judy. She also seemed to have forgotten that he had not actually ordered _any of those deaths_ , had instead been attempting to contain all three of them before all hell broke loose. He’d even done so at their last meeting —- well, to be fair, if the locket really was what was containing Lucrezia, she really had returned to herself just in time to watch him respond _completely understandably_ to finding Lucrezia Mongfish alive, well, and with the newfound ability to force his obedience.

He’d known Barry had made the locket. It should have been _unnecessary_ , since to his knowledge Barry had no reason to distrust Klaus and therefore should have _turned to him for help,_ but Klaus bitterly acknowledged that one couldn’t have everything.

The good news was, for all she had apparently decided to forego niceties, the girl still did not sound like Lucrezia. Actually, the declaration that her mind was, in fact, stronger than Lucrezia sounded fairly close to the type of declaration he’d expect during a Spark fugue. The handwriting and reuse of paper when she had never done so before corroborated that theory, as well, which... probably meant he had to make allowances for his correspondent’s mind being elsewhere.

Then he got to the last paragraph, and the rest of the letter became significantly less important.

Si vales valeo. _Si vales valeo?_ Why were they performing a Si vales valeo? Why would _Gil_ suggest a... red fire, Klaus bet he could guess exactly who Gilgamesh was planning to use as an anchor, too. He damn well knew his son well enough for that, at least. What in the world was going on over there?

He grabbed a new piece of paper and a pen to begin a response, wincing as the motion pulled at his wounds and not caring in the slightest.

“Herr Baron,” his guard said in alarm, rushing over. “Is everything alright?”

“Not _now_ ,” he snapped.

“But -—“ Klaus growled, and he shut up, wringing his hands and eyeing the jump in Klaus’s readings nervously. Klaus ignored him.

_Do not under any circumstances continue that procedure! Si vales valeo’s track record for actually solving the problem it was meant to solve is non-existent. The very best result you can expect is the subjects involved becoming ravening monsters, one of which will still have the injuries I assume you are performing the procedure to heal._

“I’m summoning Doctor Sun, sir,” the guard said, and ran to the door.

“Do _not_ \--“ Klaus started, and then gave up.

_Please, send them both to the hospital. I give my word I will not bomb your Castle should they leave. In fact, come yourself!_

He signed the note and thrust it back at the messenger clank, which caught it in surprise. Apparently, it was expecting him to take longer. “Take this back to her as fast as you can,” he ordered. “It is _very important_ she read it before this stupidity gets much further. Go before he gets back.” The clank nodded and then leapt off his knee and disappeared, leaving Klaus to lie back and stare at the ceiling. Hopefully that would get through to her, and she wouldn’t continue just for the fun of it and kill both of the people she’d claimed to want to save.

Being a Spark himself, he wasn’t holding his breath.

* * *

They were going to be okay, they had to be _okay_.... Agatha chanted this to herself in her head, under the buzz of heterodyning, and sank herself into the technological problem. She wouldn't let them _not_ be okay, even if the Castle was having power problems. She -- 

The messenger clank landed on her shoulder, and she sighed and checked the paper. Maybe the Baron had -- the Baron did _not_ have any helpful suggestions regarding the procedure. They'd been expecting Tarvek to go up like a torch any second already; even without the Baron's threats, Gil made it sound like they might not have been able to get him back out through the Castle in time. Not that she really believed the Baron's promises but it was kind of a moot point now. 

She set the clank to cobbling together the mobile _si vales valeo_ harnesses she'd designed and wrote back quickly, _Sorry, no time, already started. Wounds are healing well, the trouble is Gil diagnosed Hogfarb's resplendent immolation in an advanced stage. He also described your disconcerting immunization program. No ravening so far though! Even basic delirium has passed. And remarkably nothing is actually on fire. I'll copy my notes for you when I get a chance._

"All right, shoo." She patted the clank. Now about those harnesses. 

Skullcaps, ready, take over the connection, up off the slabs, _yes_ , hahahh, everybody said you couldn't let them move, let alone out of synch, but the transfer from the original hookups went smoothly and the new ones took over with barely a blip. Yes -- yes -- good, Gil was stabilizing, the neural shock was mitigated. Gil was _really_ tough and aside from the illness Tarvek's physiology was actually a decent match, which might account for it. 

They still didn't have much time. She wasn't sure _how_ much -- there was a definite energy bleed, and the process was never meant to stop at this stage. It was like trying to prop both of them on a sword's edge. And Gil was right, of course, however worried she was about them she was far more likely to succeed if she concentrated on the _exhilarating challenge_ \-- when inaction meant failure was certain, why then madness was sanity, confidence the only possible road!

They were doing better, though, at least well enough to distract themselves with discussion of spies and snarky badinage that she only half listened to until they started talking about the Storm King conspiracy. Tarvek evidently assumed Gil knew all about it, Gil evidently hadn't got _that_ much out of Zola, and oh, goodness, _what_ had they been doing in Paris? 

She choked down the laughter enough to send somebody after Pinkie and Tiktoffen, and then things got... well... a _little_ bit messy again. _And_ they turned out to have lost their prisoners. Agatha took a minute to bury her face in her hands, while Gil and Tarvek squabbled and Violetta and Moloch started a search that was sure to be futile. 

Something tapped her knee, and she opened her eyes to see her little clank batting at her with a message from the Baron. "Oh, good, you're not going to try hitting me with a hammer?" She patted it and unrolled the paper. 

_How did Sturmvoraus come down with Hogfarb’s resplendent immolation? Never mind, I can guess, considering your current location. Having apparently reached you too late with my last note, I am aware that telling you to stop will only worsen the situation. I am still unable to leave the hospital, and so I would instead appreciate regular updates. Considering you have my son hooked into this link, I feel I should at least be entitled to that._

_Yes, notes would be appreciated. After the procedure is over, if you please._

As if she'd drop everything to copy all her... notes... ooh, actually, she could just have the clanks do it! Now that they'd mostly calmed down and decided to cooperate, anyway. Probably she should stick to the second-generation ones. Multiple copies, preferably, who knew what might happen to just one set of papers in a place like this. Blasted spiders. Well, the spiders were unlikely to bother with her notes, but the principle held; there were all sorts of peculiar hazards here. 

Agatha realized after a moment that she'd distributed all the spare paper she had on hand. Oh well, there was still room on this sheet. The Baron was being unexpectedly reasonable about this one -- granted, that might just mean he was planning something, but to be fair, he might really just be worried about Gil. She didn't want to mention they were having power problems, but she ought to tell him something. 

She chewed her pencil for a moment and then wrote, _I've got clanks duplicating my notes. I'd hate to lose the only copy in a deathtrap or something. Gil and Tarvek are actually doing really well -- they've perked up a lot._ She considered crossing that out, as they were not actually supposed to be perky in the usual course of this procedure, but decided against it. _They're maintaining good synchronization and are both coherent. Unfortunately we got a little interrupted. We lost Pinkie_ , scratch that, _the pink fake Heterodyne, who is apparently somebody Gil used to rescue a lot in Paris named Zola._ Leave Tiktoffen for now. She wasn't sure she believed he was on the Castle's side as it claimed, but she wasn't sure whether she wanted him in any extra trouble with the Baron, either. _It seems to have been her army Gil destroyed -- were you conscious for that part? it was amazing -- but Tarvek thinks she's still dangerous._

There. Pinkie didn't seem to like either of them much, so it was probably just as well for the Baron to know... okay, she didn't actually have much to tell him, but there it was. She sent the clank off and went to chivvy everybody off downstairs.

* * *

Klaus tried to calculate the time of flight for the little messenger clank. Estimated agility on the ground... obstacles indoors at both locations... plausible power supply and airspeed based on cursory examination of the propeller when deployed... adjust for Heterodyne make.... Of course, there was no telling how long it would have to wait once it got there. 

After an eternity that was actually surprisingly close to his minimum estimate, it made its way in through the window and presented him with the same sheet of paper yet again. 

The contents didn’t do all that much to alleviate his nerves.

“What do you mean it was interrupted,” he snarled aloud at the paper. He turned to the clank, which shrugged, looking apologetic. Klaus grit his teeth, and reached for a pen, using the same sheet of paper again. They would run out of space soon, but he didn’t have too much to say.

 _You interrupted si vales valeo for an escaped prisoner? In Castle Heterodyne? Red fire, what are you thinking? How are they even still alive?_ His pen went through the paper. He ignored it. _Leave the fake Heterodyne girl to the castle that has been killing fake Heterodynes for centuries and resume immediately._

He sent it off, barely paying attention to the possibility of discovery anymore. What was going on? Surely she hadn't been fool enough to start a medical procedure in a dead zone, and even if she had, a stray prisoner would have to be actively trying to shoot them all to be more immediately dangerous than a si vales valeo decay. 

_They're still alive because I'm really good,_ ran the next message, accompanied by an unexpectedly thick sheaf of paper. The clank dinged at him with an air of irritation that he wasn't sure he was imagining and indicated its winding key. _Although if they mess around with their settings again I may strangle them both myself._

_\-- Agatha_

_P.S. No, I won't really._

\-- Just what he needed, an _egotistical_ Heterodyne in fugue. Although at least she was aware enough to remember that actually strangling her patients would be a bad idea.

The remaining pages were notes in new handwriting, simultaneously awkward and unnaturally precise, describing a set of helmets and harnesses for the obscure and alarming purpose of having two si vales valeo participants up and moving. Which was a terrible idea. But they were apparently alive, and this...

...actually, this... 

He could see how that might work. Evidently was working. Fascinating, actually, he'd probably have succumbed to the temptation to fiddle with the settings himself in Gil's place. 

Also, it was heartening to know that Sturmvoraus really couldn’t make an attempt on Gilgamesh’s life without threatening his own.

Of course, if the energy for the harnesses ran out before they could complete the procedure they would both still die painfully.

The clank chose that moment to stomp on one of his wounds. “ _Ouch,_ what in—“ the clank butted him with the winding key, glaring pointedly. “All right, all right, come to the other side so I can write at the same time.”

He wound the clank absently while he considered his response. _The harnesses are impressive, I grant you. They are still only a temporary solution. You cannot possibly still be looking for that prisoner, so what is taking so long?_ He hesitated, then added, _You agreed to keep me updated_. He gave the key one more good turn, and then handed the note back to the clank. “Go.”

He spent the time until the next message working through reports, ignoring his guard who, in truth, appeared rather bored. The rate of assassinations had dropped markedly, and as none of the assassins actually seemed to belong to Mechanicsburg and he was in a large armored clank, he had a window on the town now. Communications were in place, and the switch to radio for comms had officially been instated army-wide. Good. No sign of Othar, which was just as well considering removing Gil in his current state would be fatal. A messenger came through and handed him a detailed report from Boris, about the position of the troops on the ground -- 

\-- The little clank popped up on his medical clank and dinged loudly to get his attention. The guard jumped. “Herr Baron?” he asked, eyeing the clank.

Klaus rolled his eyes where the guard couldn’t see. “I assure you, I’m in no more danger from this than I am from any other messenger bringing bad news,” he replied. “If an actual threat comes through, you will know it.” He took the paper, which at this point had definitely seen better days, and turned it a few times until he found the new entry wedged into the margin of the first page, near his initial message. It was in the odd mechanical handwriting of the copied notes, tiny as the smallest labels on the diagrams. 

_I. Okay, fine. You know this place is still damaged. We had some trouble getting lightning in the first lab we tried._

_It turns out I'm infected too. And the Castle decided to throw a fit and insist I find a cure for myself that doesn't involve hooking in with them. It doesn't have any trouble coming up with lightning to emphasize its determination to preserve the line, apparently._

_Believe me, I know the harnesses are a temporary solution. I'm working against time, here, which is why I'm dictating this to the clank, but I promise I'll get Gil and Tarvek taken care of as soon as I can. Yes, yes, I realize Gil's the only one you particularly want alive._

_Don't worry. I have a plan._

\-- Red fire, Klaus thought, staring blankly at the page in front of him, through the buzz of frantic worry that suddenly taken root, throwing a veil over everything. He’d known the Castle was crippled, of course, but the fact that they were having trouble getting enough energy to complete the procedure was...

...and Agatha herself had caught it! And she’d responded by trying to _strap herself into an active si vales valeo—_

_This is a day of firsts,_ Klaus thought numbly. _I never thought I’d find myself in complete agreement with Castle Heterodyne, and yet here we are._ They weren’t out of the woods yet, though. There was still the matter of the Spark running an extremely dangerous procedure involving _his son_ coming down with a disease that could at any moment cause her to literally go up in flames. What good was a plan if she couldn’t execute it?

For a moment he thought he heard a scream, then that he'd imagined one out of sheer horror. Then, outside, the town went quiet. 

The people all noticed and paused -- soldiers, Mechanicsburgers, even the ill-timed tourists. There was a vibration missing from the air, perhaps. 

The streetlamps went out. The fountains stopped. 

Castle Heterodyne was dead.

* * *

Agatha felt _fantastic_. As if the Dyne were still running through her veins -- actually, it probably was, even with much of the energy expended. Energy that meant they were all alive, alive, triumphant, Gil and Tarvek weren't dying, everything was _fine_. She could dance, sing, defeat the Other, fix the Castle, take on the world. Drink the Dyne again. She wouldn't try to duplicate that particular feat _precisely_ , of course; she'd melted all her equipment for distributing the excess energy. But -- oh, let's see -- even with no extra repositories, she should be able to handle another one-third dose once this burned off. Hm, no energy bleed anymore. Be safe and cut it to a quarter or a fifth. Just to start. 

Feeling proud of herself for being so prudent, Agatha set out to burn off the current energy build-up through sustained mental effort. She might be able to solve the problem of the clanks squabbling. If they wouldn't listen to _her_ , then maybe they'd listen to....

Huh.

They'd listened to Tarvek, after he banged them together. Which had prompted Gil to compare him to the Baron. Who had, now that she thought about it, not answered her last message. Unless she'd missed it in all the... hm. Nope. No messenger clank anywhere. 

Well, he hadn't had the Castle destroyed, either, that was good, and he'd probably realized it was down by now. Possibly he'd held off responding for the same reason -- he wanted Gil alive, and for a while, that had meant letting them work! 

He _had_ let them work. She supposed she should probably update him. The thought crossed her mind to keep quiet and let him think Gil was still -- no, that would be... underhanded and mean and probably not actually very useful. She should let him know. She had plenty of messengers to send. 

_Herr Baron,_ she began,

 _I'm happy to report that we completed the procedure and everyone is fine now! Perhaps even a little over-energized._ She stopped and lifted the pen away before everything that had happened could come bubbling out. Hold on. The Dyne was apparently supposed to be a secret. Gil could easily tell him all about it when they were back together, though. On the other hand she'd _really_ better not mention Lucrezia getting loose and nearly killing Gil. (Anger curled upward in her chest like a kindling flame. How _dare she_.) 

Um. _It did get a little more complicated than we'd hoped. You probably noticed that I had to shut down the Castle for a bit. I hope when it comes back up, it will have a restored grasp of biology, since it seemed to think I had time to reproduce before combusting (somehow without infecting the baby, either?), or that reconstructing a corporeal duplicator that tore its inventor in half was a less risky solution than blood filtration._

_But it worked! Thank you for the time to concentrate._

_Agatha Heterodyne_

It occurred to her too late that this might veer toward talking about her love life, but then, presumably the Baron had been the one to tell Gil that the Heterodyne Boys hadn't been able to find the main power source. It was an _odd_ thought, but he'd probably visited. He might be familiar with its, er, attitudes. 

Now, about that new clank!

* * *

It occurred to Agatha while setting up the transfer mechanisms for the Castle and the 'closest thing to a mother' Gil had ever known that Gil's father would have had time to answer her again. As fast as he'd responded during the si vales valeo, this was actually a little odd. What was he doing now that the Castle was down and they weren't busy dying?

She glanced over. Gil and Tarvek were occupied. She wasn't sure she wanted to explain this... questionably useful correspondence, especially not to Tarvek or the Castle, and maybe not to Gil either. Anyway they were busy. She jotted down another quick note. 

_Herr Baron,_

_I thought you might like to know we've found Lucrezia's secret lab. No wasps, but -- ugh -- definitely her kind of thing otherwise._ She could, theoretically, probably have used the mind control tubes to make Gil and Tarvek go somewhere safer. But the idea was repulsive. And not fair to either of them, although maybe Gil would leave if she told him his father was being... less inclined to just kill her. (She wasn't entirely sure she believed that, though, once Gil was safe, and she suspected he'd think she was a fool for even considering it.) But once she stopped panicking over the idea of people walking in here to get themselves killed for her -- and she was pretty sure the Castle would listen to her about that, when it was calmer -- well... it was looking like she did need their help. 

_Like mind transfer and copying mechanisms. It turns out that she put the mind of the Muse Otilia into a construct body -- Von Pinn. Who is here and badly injured. We're going to try to put her back where she belongs._ Maaayybe she should stop telling him they were working on so many things other than the Castle repairs, but she didn't really want to give him too many details on those. _I think it might also provide a way to get Lucrezia out of my head permanently, but it might take some adaptation to remove just one of two minds._

_I must admit, at the moment the Castle is easier to repair when unconscious._

_Agatha Heterodyne_

* * *

_Herr Baron,_

_I am pretty sure Lilith would disapprove of most of the words I have about this. Zola is as dangerous as Tarvek thought and just got worse. She hit us with knockout powder -- Tarvek was only dazed and managed to eavesdrop on some of this -- and apparently ended up deliberately getting a copy of Lucrezia trapped somehow in her head so she can go through her secrets and take over her plans._

_I'd be all for Lucrezia having more enemies except for the take over her plans part. _

_Hopefully as soon as we've got the Castle back up it can find her and grab her for me._

_Agatha Heterodyne_

_P.S. Gil is fine._

* * *

_Herr Baron,_

_You probably already noticed this, but we've re-awakened the Castle. Zola got out, though, by flying coat. I guess I hope somebody takes her to the Hospital. She has information and apparently Gil's still kind of attached to her. She took something that made her very strong and very fast, and possibly also very crazy, so when she wakes up, you might want to keep an eye out._

_I'm starting to wonder what's going on out there. I haven't had a lot of time to go looking out windows. I suppose you're busy too, but you suddenly seem to be more busy. I hope that doesn't mean you've decided to destroy us after all. Haha. Or that there are other problems I haven't been able to see from here._

_Agatha Heterodyne_

* * *

_Herr Baron,_

_It's been a while since I last heard from you. You didn't get distracted studying my little clanks or something, did you? Or has the Castle not bothered to mention the town being under attack?_

_Agatha_

* * *

_I feel a little silly asking this, but, are you all right?_

* * *


	2. Communication

* * *

Klaus awoke in the dark with a deep ache in his bones and all his muscles burning. He tried to clench his teeth and found an obstacle in his mouth, not hard enough to break his teeth but also not very yielding. 

Sun. He must be in the high-pressure healing engine. He'd tried to get to the Castle, and Sun had taken him down --

The _Castle_. He'd been too frantic to think of canceling the order to destroy it. How long had he been in here?

He braced himself against one wall of the tank and drove his fist out through the metal. 

Someone shouted an alarm, and then a mechanical claxon went off. He ignored that for now, instead choosing to brace himself again and punch under the hole he’d just made, tearing the weakened metal down and away from him. One more brace, feet on either side of the rip, and he heaved until the metal bent enough for him to escape.

Sun solved the problem of locating someone for an update by punching Klaus in the head so hard he nearly flew backwards into the now-broken healing engine.

Klaus caught himself on a reasonably intact surface and lunged forward again, seizing his doctor by both lapels. "Castle Heterodyne," he snarled. "Did we destroy Castle Heterodyne?"

Sun eeled out of his coat. "Of course not," he snapped. "Now sit down."

"My orders," Klaus roared, seizing him again. "There was a deadline. Has it --"

"Oh, my!" said a high, affectedly fluting voice. Something familiar about it. Something mechanical about it. He turned and saw a clank (elegant, dangerous) and grabbed its arm. It -- she -- jerked away with unexpected strength and speed, or he was still too slow, and he only tore the sleeve of her gown. 

"Klaus! Enough!" Sun barked, and Klaus wheeled on him and went on the attack, furious, focused. Sun batted away his efforts without counterattacking. Yet. "This is Princess Anevka Sturmvoraus! She came to request an appointment with you. _When you are healed!_ "

"I will not be put back in your damned engine! I have to --" A sharp blow caught his temple, charged metal, and he saw stars. 

" _Stop!_ " The word seemed to ring in his brain. Klaus stilled, panting, the madness receding. 

"Well," Sun said, looking at him suspiciously. "Aren't you unusually cooperative."

Klaus glowered at him and tried not to sway or stagger. Healing was a tiring business and he hadn't quite let the engine finish, but he'd do. "I have _work_ to do," he said. "Delay the assault on Castle Heterodyne. And get me reports on --"

"Don't tell _me_ ," Sun said impatiently. "Tell Boris. Have it your way, if you must, but you are still on bed rest." He turned and bowed formally. "Thank you, Princess. Believe it or not, he's being downright civil compared to his usual convalescences. I don't know how you managed it." 

"Oh -- I had to deal with my father, you know. Let me help," the clank said sweetly, ostensibly to Sun, but there was a steel behind the words that Klaus recognized too late and it was meant for him. "I don't mind. I don't have anything else to do, and I can keep up with him. I know he has work to do."

Klaus said, against his will, "That might have its uses. For one thing, I can keep an eye on her."

"Then it's settled!" She beamed at them both. "I'll be a volunteer nurse. Oh, it will be so nice to have something worthwhile to do instead of just waiting." She put a hand on Klaus's shoulder and pressed him to sit on a bed, and he glimpsed Sun approaching with a needle. "Now just rest for a minute."

* * *

He came awake again all at once, eyes snapping open just long enough to take in that he was in the dark again. He closed his eyes quickly and took stock of the situation. He was in a bed, so they must have moved him from Sun’s laboratory while he was unconscious (she’d _ordered him_ unconscious -- no, focus). There was a distinct smell of antiseptic -- still in the hospital (how had she gotten into the hospital -- no, not yet). He could hear monitoring equipment running, but certainly less than when he’d entered the hospital -- the injuries he’d sustained from breaking out of the healing engine had been minor (she’d snapped him straight out of a Spark fugue with a _word_ \-- stop). He opened his eyes slowly, let them adjust to the dim room. He was facing the door.

There wasn’t a guard stationed there.

“Have you finished pretending to sleep?” a chillingly familiar voice asked from the far corner of the room, laughter lacing the words. “I’m the one who woke you up, you know, it’s absolutely not working.”

He shut his eyes again, and turned, opening them to look at the clank he’d been told was Princess Anevka Sturmvoraus. “Hello, Lucrezia,” he said, levelly as he could manage.

“Hello, Klaus!” The clank smiled, blank eyes staring at him without blinking. “Not what you expected, I presume?”

“I wasn’t aware that you had built yourself a new body, no,” Klaus responded. “Did your daughter not suit you?”

The clank stopped smiling, then laughed, cruel and familiar. “Oh, Klaus, you didn’t think there was only _one copy_ , did you?”

He had. Clearly, he had been wrong about a number of things. Lucrezia stepped towards the bed, still smiling that dead-eyed clank smile, and placed one cold metal hand on his head. “Hold still and let me look at you,” she crooned, and he felt his body seize in place, suddenly unable to even blink. “You haven’t changed a bit, Klaus. I always did think you would age well. You have such strong features.”

“Don’t touch me,” he said flatly, ability to use his vocal chords suddenly returning. Lucrezia snatched her hand away as though burned, smile gone.

“Oh, don’t be like that, Klaus. After all, we’re going to be seeing _so much_ of each other now, it would be a shame if we were fighting.” Something of what he was feeling must have crossed his face, because she smiled again. “Oh, yes, you agreed, remember? I am to be your new guard! And with me watching over you, there will be _no more escape attempts_.” The order settled into him like cloth sinking into water. He sat up all at once, lunged at her, opened his mouth to shout at her, suddenly furious. “Aa -- none of that,” Lucrezia said, and he lost the ability to attack. “You’re going to stay here and heal, Klaus. You are going to be grouchy, and you are going to run your Empire from this bed like you always do, and you are going to heal and return to your Castle. And I will be here the _whole time_.“ The smile widened -- too wide for a human mouth, the material covering the hinges on the clank’s mouth stretching in a way that made her face look elongated, monstrous. “Let’s keep this conversation between us, Klaus. Lie down and go to sleep.”

He slept.

* * *

They had not destroyed Castle Heterodyne while he was asleep, that was something. He got back to work, was irascible toward everyone, including Boris, who really didn't deserve it, and when he felt cold metal touch his calf he nearly kicked out before realizing that Lucrezia was on the opposite side of the bed. 

The metal was followed by a faintly scratchy sensation that he identified with only moderate confidence, because this was not something that poked him in the leg during the course of an ordinary day, as paper. 

Messenger clank, he thought. She must have sent another update despite his lack of reply. And the clank was apparently as keen on giving Lucrezia information about Castle Heterodyne as he was.

He supposed that did put the final nail in the coffin of the theory that he’d been conversing with Lucrezia. Not that it mattered anymore.

Lucrezia had been reading over his shoulder for the past hour or so, but she was beginning to look rather bored. Klaus was sure he had no idea why that might be. One would think that a Spark with aspirations to rule Europa would _relish_ the chance to read all about the requisitions of the various forces currently on the ground. He patted the little clank to let it know he’d noticed it, and then went back to his report.

When Lucrezia finally wandered away to the door to “ask for a nurse to bring him something to eat,” he reached under and hid the note in the middle of the papers he was currently reviewing.

Two minutes later, another note poked him in the leg.

By the time he’d managed to smuggle all of Agatha’s messages into his stack (he was just thankful she hadn’t sent any more of her experimental notes, because his pile had grown suspiciously in size as it was and he’d had to discard a number from the bottom to level it back out), Lucrezia had returned from the hallway. She eyed him, then rolled her eyes and wandered back over to the window, picking up a book. “Someone should be here with a meal shortly,” she told him. “ _Do_ try to be finished with your current business by then, Klaus.”

An order, of course, but a vague one. Klaus could certainly work with vague. "I'm never _finished_ ," he said patiently. "But I'll make time for lunch if you insist." His current business. If he knew more about the small clanks' capabilities --

\-- Act normal. No more escape attempts. He still wouldn't be able to act directly against Lucrezia. Damn. At least he could read.

He skimmed the pages leading to the first of Agatha’s letters quickly, making notes and writing quick messages to the requisitions officers as he went.

Agatha’s letters he read more slowly.

Everyone had survived, contrary to all reason. That was something. Agatha seemed rather fixated on this Zola. She seemed to be taking things personally. --Well, the possibility of an extra copy of Lucrezia might have been useful information if he'd been awake to receive it sooner.

The last few messages grew shorter, a little suspicious, and then actually concerned. 

It was almost touching. 

"I'm beginning to wonder why you _don't_ just destroy Castle Heterodyne," Lucrezia remarked idly. 

Klaus casually shuffled his papers to reveal a report on latrines, but she didn't return to read over his shoulder. "It seems like a shame," he said, trying not to sound like he cared too much. She probably knew. It wasn't exactly a secret that Gil was there. But maybe if he didn't make a fuss, it wouldn't be fun for her. More peculiarly, she had to know Agatha was there. Was she not fond of her other self? But she'd seemed happy enough at the idea of existing multiply. Or did she regard her daughter as a liability? 

Could he use that?

He couldn't let her order him to destroy it. She'd told him to behave normally -- that actually wouldn't be enough of an aberration to alert anyone, but perhaps he could make her think it would. Or distract her. Maybe if he reminded her it could be useful. "It could answer so many questions." Perhaps not that way, even if she didn't have to care what he found out about her any longer. "My last reports from the repair crew mentioned some fascinating artifacts from past conquests were still intact."

"From the people who lost?" Lucrezia asked drily.

"They can be _improved_ ," he pointed out, letting the Spark leak into his voice. 

"There _are_ a few things in there I'd like to get my hands on again...." 

Klaus breathed a little more easily. "I don't doubt it." 

Now, he had to get a message back to Agatha. Judging from the circus, she might have an effectively endless supply of messenger clanks. If she decided to check in again and revealed something that _did_ prompt Lucrezia to more decisive action.... 

"Princess Anevka", he recalled from the reports on Sturmhalten, had helpfully quelled the populace (of _course_ she had, they were _practically all revenants_ ) -- and denounced her brother as a traitor. He wasn't sure how or when Lucrezia had replaced her, and as he was dealing with Sturmvorauses (well, only one of them at this point, technically), there was a possibility that she and her brother had planned that much, but most likely her involvement would at least indicate trouble. Especially, perhaps, if his letter was a sufficient contrast to the relatively frank and informal -- and heated -- missives about experimenting on Gil. 

He considered omitting the salutation, but decided in the end that it would be more suspicious if he didn’t give some indication of who he was writing to. “ _Lady,_ ” he settled on. Lucrezia may still want to know _which_ lady, but he had enough of them in his employ and sending him regular reports that he had a chance to obscure the true recipient.

Now for the tricky part: warning Agatha without sounding like he was doing more than assuaging a concerned subordinate’s polite inquiries.

“ _Your concern for my personal well-being is appreciated, but unnecessary. I am very firmly consigned to bed rest, and have little chance to do more than heal under the watchful eye of my current guard._ ” Would that be enough? No, he’d been guarded the entire time. How much more could he risk? 

“ _It is a relief to hear that the procedure went smoothly after its initial upsets,_ ” he began. That could potentially be about anything he’d been reviewing. He briefly considered trying to warn her not to send any notes, but discarded it. Too risky to even mention notes were available with the threat of discovery. “ _I believe further updates are unnecessary at this late point in your venture. I leave the cleanup to you._ ” Damn it, no, he needed to give her more information. If he didn’t manage to bring up Lucrezia’s pseudonym there was no point in even writing this letter. And he couldn’t just strike a line in something that was supposed to be official correspondence. How to... Oh, damn. He knocked the ink over onto the page. “Red _fire_ ,” he cursed, quickly blotting what wasn’t obscured from the last line out under the pretense of saving the other documents. Lucrezia looked up, surprised, and then laughed at him.

“Thank you,” he growled, moving his papers onto the table beside the bed quickly and crumpling up the note he’d been working on. “I appreciate your exemplary service as a volunteer nurse. Truly!”

“Oh, stop,” Lucrezia said lazily, and the next sarcastic thing he had planned dried up on his tongue. He scowled. “Like you can’t handle an ink spill on your own.” She stood up and made her way to the door. “Look, see, I’ll even go and get you some more.”

“ _Thank_ you,” he gritted, pulling out an unaffected sheet of paper and pointedly uncrumpling the last page to begin copying with what was left of the ink. Perfect. Now to finish before she got back.

_Further updates should be unnecessary until my return to Castle Wulfenbach. Should something unexpected occur before that time, I will continue to receive reports or correspondence at the Hospital. Inquiries of lesser import should be addressed to Boris, or to Princess Anevka Sturmvoraus, who has been acting as my volunteer nurse and guard, and assisting me on some matters that require a physical presence to address._

_Congratulations on your successful experiment._

_Baron Klaus Wulfenbach_.

* * *

Almost as soon as the squid let Agatha down, one of her little clanks appeared to tap at her elbow. She glanced down, startled and relieved and wary, and then blinked. It was carrying paper, but the paper was crumpled into a ball. About half of it appeared to have been dipped in ink and the rest was covered in smudges. "Did you have an accident on the way?" she asked under her breath. 

No, when she had a chance to take it and flatten out the paper, it looked like the ink had arrived while it was being written. An entire sentence was mostly blotted out, the final ones cramped and winding between that and the spill. 

For all that the wording of the note was weirdly formal, and bland. He suddenly wasn't scolding her, and didn't want more updates? 

...Addressed to _Princess Anevka?_

What exactly was going on here?

Agatha's eyes narrowed and she stalked over to where Gil and Tarvek were arguing again. 

"I still learned a lot from your father," Tarvek was saying. "If someone can't handle an unpleasant truth? Lie to them." She hesitated at that; she still didn't know how much to trust the Baron. "If someone won't listen to reason? Make them. If people don't choose to live peaceably? Don't give them a choice. If you don't like the rules --" 

Violetta came back with the food and yelped at the renewed roomful of flame, and while she and Tarvek were arguing Agatha got hold of herself. The strange part here wasn't what the Baron was telling her -- it was what he _wasn't_ saying. And it was time she 'fessed up. She needed more information and Gil and Tarvek might have it. 

Violetta jabbed her fist into Tarvek's gut and produced a resounding CLONG. Tarvek turned back to Gil and pulled up his shirt to reveal a spare piece of metal plating tucked into his trousers, which looked really uncomfortable. " _Change the game._ "

"We might need to do that about now," Agatha said. They both jumped and looked faintly guilty. She waved the Baron's battered note. "I've actually been writing to the Baron since the Torchmen went up --"

"You _what_?" Gil asked, sounding rather strangled. "You didn't tell me --!" He broke off, expression suddenly horrified. "Look. Agatha. He really believes you're the Other. I don't know what he's told you but we really still have to consider ourselves under siege --"

"Well, he really didn't interrupt the si vales valeo and I think I believe he was genuinely alarmed by the prospect," Agatha said wryly. "I don't know if he was pretending to believe it was me, but I'm more puzzled by this. He suddenly went all formal on me, but on wrecked paper." She handed Gil the letter and then fixed Tarvek with a look. "Do you have any idea what your sister is up to?" 

Tarvek went pale. 

That was probably not a good sign. 

"Tarvek?" 

He swallowed. "Anevka isn't Anevka, she's Lucrezia."

" _What._ " That might have come out a little more deadly than she intended. Then again, maybe not. Vrin's words came back to her, suddenly. _Now that the Lady is safely with Anevka...!_

Gil lowered his father's note. "You made _another copy_ of the _Other_?" 

Tarvek clutched at his hair. "I thought she was _moving_ her mind around! Like she did with Otilia! I built her a new mechanical head, and she was supposed to move out into that one, but then I found out she can make any number of, of --"

"Copies," Agatha said. "Like with the Castle, or Zola. I suddenly really hope the Baron captured all her equipment back in Sturmhalten." 

Tarvek tugged at his coat collar. "Um... not... likely. She had evacuation plans."

"Did you," Gil growled, "do _anything_ there that didn't actually end up _helping_ her?"

"I was trying to get rid of her without killing Agatha," Tarvek snarled back. 

"Stop. Just stop! Gil, this is bad, but he was trying to help. Mostly." Agatha pressed a hand to her forehead. "So Lucrezia is pretending to be Anevka and hanging around the Baron. I don't know how easy Lucrezia made it for him to identify her at the circus, or if it would be the same with a clank, but I'm not sure why he'd put up with either of them." She looked at Gil, who shook his head. 

Tarvek said, "Anevka was going to denounce me as a traitor and claim to be on his side, but I didn't think he liked any of us that much."

"And this is just... a weird message. I don't have the other ones to show you anymore, but they were different. Not this much of a mess, even when he was in a hurry, and he wanted information, and he didn't write them like a reply to an obligatory get-well note."

Gil frowned at it. "Without your name."

"Yes."

"It looks like he doesn't want her to know he's writing to you."

Agatha blew out a breath. "That's what I was thinking, but why would he let her see it at all?"

Tarvek, looking rather gray, said, "You said he recognized Lucrezia at the circus? --Do you, ah, still have that little sphere you found in your pocket in Sturmhalten?"

Agatha frowned. "The little bomb? I -- no. I guess I lost it. I don't remember it being in with my clothes." 

"It wasn't a bomb," Tarvek said. "It was a new kind of hive engine. One wasp, designed to infect a Spark." 

They both stared at him. Agatha noted with a distant part of her mind that Gil looked like he was about to blow up, but by the time she finished noticing this most of her was grabbing Tarvek by the coat and screaming, "That was a _hive engine_ and **you didn't TELL ME?** "

"When?" Tarvek demanded. "In front of his soldiers?"

"Yes! That would have been good! They were Vespiary Squad, they were supposed to know how to deal with that!"

He looked incredulous. "There wasn't time anyway! I was more worried about getting it turned off first, and then the mob showed up and the next thing I knew, somebody blew up the message and, and Lucrezia shot me!"

"You know what, if you'd left my message alone, I bet the Baron's people wouldn't have wanted to blow it up!" 

"They'd have killed us both! Especially you! I was expecting him to wipe out the whole town!"

"He didn't do that when he _did_ find out it was full of revenants!"

"ENOUGH!" Gil grabbed both of them by the shoulder and hauled them apart with a slight shake. Agatha had half forgotten how strong he was. She smacked his wrist and he let her go. "Sturmvoraus. If you seriously think Lucrezia is running the Empire through my father...." He swallowed and looked at Agatha. "I've got to go. I'm no good as a hostage against _her_ , and she could be doing anything."

"You can't go in there," Tarvek protested. "She'll get you too." 

"I'm also not sure I can get you out of the Castle safely yet," Agatha said. "Although staying in it might not be much better anyway, if she wants _me_ dead."

Gil smoothed the paper out jerkily, frustrated. "He's obviously fighting her --"

"He shouldn't be able to do that," Tarvek said. Gil glared at him. "Revenants aren't supposed to be able to resist! It's the whole point!"

Gil massaged the bridge of his nose. Agatha was sure she'd seen the Baron do the same thing. "Well, he's not being _very_ obvious. But he's trying to keep information from her. Still... we might have a little time. There are a lot of people who aren't revenants. We checked. She wouldn't want to tip her hand too soon. But we've got to help him." He looked rather defiantly at Tarvek and then turned to Agatha, expression going a little more pleading. "I know he wanted to kill you --"

Agatha shook her head. "If the other choice was letting Lucrezia run amok, I was going to let him. But I'm not sure what to do. I could send my little clanks with orders to try to dismantle her...."

"I had a voice override for Anevka's body, but I don't know if she might have found it," Tarvek said. They both eyed him. "Look, you didn't know her. She was dangerous enough before I gave her the ability to electrocute people with a touch. Um...." He frowned. "Agatha, you might be able to command him --"

"There's something I imagine he'd find very reassuring," she said drily. 

"I _mean_ you might be able to override her," he snapped. "It seems to make a difference who's using the voice, in the same body, but we think there's an imprinting effect. He got his first orders when she was using yours." 

Agatha huffed softly in her throat. "Vrin didn't obey me. But it took an effort, and she _wanted_ Lucrezia." She hummed for a moment. "And... I might be able to do the voice better now."

Tarvek's eyebrows knit questioningly. Gil said, "We don't want you to get close, though. The locket's too vulnerable." 

Agatha picked up her clank. "No. We don't want to do that. But these things can do pretty decent recording." She took a deep breath, fought down a lump of nausea, and let her inner Lucrezia a little closer to the surface, along with her rage at the very idea, before speaking as forcefully as she could.

* * *

Klaus woke to the now significantly more familiar feeling of a piece of paper poking him in the leg.

She’d written back after all, then. When he hadn’t gotten a response within even his maximum estimate for how long it would take the clank to go, receive a message and return, he’d assumed she’d done the prudent thing and decided not to send another letter.

Clearly, that was too much to hope for. Ah, well, the message he’d given to the storyteller earlier certainly wouldn’t _hurt_.

He’d rolled onto his side during his forced slumber. He slit his eyes open and let them adjust enough to determine he was facing away from Lucrezia. Good. He let his eyes close again, made sure his breathing didn’t change, and reached carefully for the note.

Which, to his utter surprise, dodged and ran quickly up to his head, shifting the blankets just enough that he could feel its progress. He placed his hand back down on the bed, afraid too much movement would attract the attention of the person he could feel sitting in the far corner behind him. What in the world -—

There. He heard the clank put the paper down on the pillow next to him, smelled the paper and ink. The clank left it there and apparently moved towards him again, placing a tiny cold pincer on his shoulder as warning before climbing up onto his arm and over his shoulder to perch on his neck. Klaus stayed as still as he could, opened his eyes again to see—yes, the clank had tilted the note so that he could read it.

_Get ready,_ it said. The clank inserted something small and hard into his ear.

“ _You do_ not _have to listen to her,_ ” Lucrezia’s voice proclaimed in his ear, clear and angry and full of order harmonics and Spark.

Klaus had rolled off the bed, one hand up to catch the little clank and its listening device and the other dragging a sheet off with him, before he really had a chance to register what had happened.

“Repeat it,” he growled, rolling to his feet and dashing to the open doorway.

“ _Stop!_ ” Lucrezia shouted behind him.

“ _You do_ not _have to listen to her,_ ” the recording declared.

He didn’t stop.

He dashed through the hallway, dodging some nurses who shrieked and dived out of his way. “Play it on a loop,” he snarled, gripping the sheet grimly around himself and ramming the door to the stairwell open with his shoulder. The clank obliged.

Down the stairwell, one flight, two—a door slammed open beneath him on the third landing. He was still about two floors up. He could perhaps swing—

“ _You do_ not _have to listen to her,_ ” the little clank played. “Hold on,” he told it, and jumped.

He fell down past a guard, caught the landing, and swung over and onto the floor. He felt his shoulder twinge from the strain, but Sun had always been _very_ good and there were no longer any real injuries to tear. He swung and jumped, landing right in front of the door and banging it open with a crash.

The clank chirped indignantly from where it had managed to wrap the cord of the listening device around his neck and hold on. The device itself had fallen out. He put it back in—(“ _You do_ not _have to listen to her_ ”) and then caught the clank and put it back on his shoulder. “Try this,” he offered, rearranging the sheet like a toga and ignoring the cries of surprise as he dashed past. He offered the end to the clank. It dinged agreeably and clamped on.

Down the corridor—turn right, dash through a waiting room -- guards, turn, through the fire doors and into an observation theater, snatch as many tools off the tray next to the surgical bed as possible in passing -- no second exit on this floor, up the stairs leading to the seating and out the door at the top.

Now he was on the second floor. Wonderful. Maybe a window...

“Herr Baron!” Lucrezia shouted from ahead of him, charging towards him far faster than a human would be able to. There were guards behind her, holding weapons and coming at a much more reasonable pace. “Herr Baron, wait!”

“ _You do_ not _have to listen to her,_ ” promised Agatha Heterodyne’s recording. The clank jumped off his shoulder and flew to his hand, clamping onto his fingers and tugging impatiently towards a window.

He made a decision.

He grabbed onto the clank tightly.

He jumped.

The clank caught him at the peak of his leap and veered right, along the wall of the Hospital instead of away from it. It seemed to be struggling, losing altitude faster than Klaus would have liked, but he was rather astonished it could carry him at all. It turned abruptly again at the corner, sacrificing more height in the maneuver, and dived into the maze of Mechanicsburg buildings, weaving around obstacles and Mechanicsburg citizens who dodged with the air of people who ducked mad things flying at their heads every Tuesday.

They also shouted in surprise and pointed, gaping, but they _did_ get out of the way.

The clank's propellor made a grinding noise. Klaus, with extensive experience of how overstrained Spark-work could fail, closed his hand around it to make it stop. They fell the remaining few feet to the ground to the accompaniment of alarmed dinging noises and landed just out of sight of the Hospital, around a corner. He set the clank on his shoulder and started running again.

He had to find a place to hide. He was in a crowd. The Heterodyne Observation Tower was to his left -- no, too far, he’d never make it. Gkika’s was on the other side of town. The Castle would be best, but it was heavily guarded by people who would helpfully try to send him back to Sun. He dodged a family of tourists and swerved around another corner, using a lamppost to maintain his momentum, and then realized he had carelessly gotten back on a direct line to the Hospital. 

Something exploded behind him, the blast knocking him forward and into a wall. People screamed and started running. He caught his little clank, grabbed the biggest of the scalpels, turned.

The Hospital was on fire. An entire wing was collapsed. As he watched in horror, another blast hit the remaining wing, stone and metal screaming as it flew in all directions.

Klaus had taken three running steps back towards it before he stopped himself.

He couldn’t go back. Lucrezia may have survived the blast, it would be handing himself back over to the Other.

He couldn’t help.

He watched the Hospital collapse completely, teeth gritted.

“ _You do_ not _have to listen to her,_ ” the recording device reminded him.

He turned and slipped into the screaming crowd, following them down a side street and towards the center of town.

Mechanicsburg was under attack. He was compromised; his troops would protect the town, but they were also prepared to besiege it; he couldn't be there to direct them; the Castle was still broken; he himself had disarmed the defenses and bound the monsters to the shadows until a Heterodyne was acknowledged.

Fortunately, he thought grimly, he knew just the person to solve that problem. And she’d sent him a thoughtful enough gift that he was willing to bet she’d be interested.

* * *

"Castle," Agatha said, shifting the clank into gear, "any news on the Baron?" Even now that Gil and Tarvek knew, it was not something she wanted to ask about in front of the prisoners. He hadn't written back. She wasn't entirely surprised. If her attempt to help had been effective, he was probably busy, one way or another. 

"I did say, my lady, I am not currently at full strength. My perceptions are still distressingly limited, particularly in the town at large." 

Agatha frowned. "Well... if you do spot him and he's doing anything against Lucrezia, try and help." 

"What if he comes here?"

She blinked. "You think that's likely?"

"You are here. His son is here. And evidently Lucrezia has some significant influence in the hospital."

"A lot of that was probably through him, though. But fine, whatever, if he comes here bring him to me. Unharmed."

* * *

"By the way," the Castle said, almost apologetically, which set off alarm bells in Agatha's head. "In my current state, I cannot see details. But the hospital _has_ been destroyed." 

Her grip on the lever slipped, and she hastily set it to fixed and wiped her hands so she wouldn't drop the pillar back on what was left of Tiktoffen or his device. "What?! How?" She'd thought... she really shouldn't have thought her enemies would be civilized enough to leave the hospital alone. Especially not with the Baron in it. But she'd also thought it would be really well defended. 

"I do not know. There are multiple attackers. The Baron--" 

"Tiktoffen wasn't just saying that to throw me off, then?"

"Oh, I believe he was sincere," said the Castle. "But no, the Baron escaped the destruction. In fact, he's nearly reached you."

"Nearly?" said a deep, tired, dry voice. 

Agatha, to her considerable embarrassment, yelped. 

The Baron was leaning on the doorframe, wearing a hospital bedsheet much like the one Tarvek had arrived in, with her clank sitting on one shoulder and the earpiece still plugged in. His feet were bare and bleeding slightly, and he looked exhausted. 

"Oh good, the recording worked," Agatha said, starting toward him reflexively and then realizing she wasn't sure what she meant to do when she got there. She also felt very aware suddenly that she was standing in a room full of dead bodies, even though most of them weren't actually her fault. "But what are you doing _here_?"

The Baron raised an eyebrow at her. "Avoiding Lucrezia. And looking for you." 

Agatha paused. "I'm glad you appreciate the distinction now."

"It helped that you didn't immediately turn around and gloat." He didn't smile, but his eyes went minutely less tight at the corners. "Your message could have said anything, but it only took me off her leash."

"Ah." Agatha felt some of the tension in her shoulders release. "I never actually wanted to overthrow the Empire... well, maybe for a few minutes after Lars died. Just not to be your prisoner." She hesitated, then held out a hand. "We can work on it?"

He started to step forward from the doorway, extending a hand in return, but his balance apparently deserted him. Agatha automatically tried to catch him, discovered that he was a _lot_ heavier than Tarvek, and ended up sitting rather abruptly on the floor. The Baron grunted and levered himself off her shoulders to sit a slight distance away and pick a bit of rubble out of his foot. "Yes, I think we'll have to," he said. "But first, shoes."

* * *


	3. Epilogue

* * *

**“...Tremble before me!”** And the Doom Bell rang for the first time in nearly twenty years.

Everything did tremble, even the Castle. Klaus could feel the stone thrum with the Bell under his grip. The sound and not-sound went through him, with less of a shock than the first time he'd heard it but a deeper pain. 

_Let this not be a mistake_ , he thought fiercely, against the sudden imposed certainty that it was. 

The boy with the bleached-blond hair came forward and knelt in front of Agatha, who was the only still thing in the scene, and said, "Welcome home, Lady Heterodyne." Then, in an undertone that he might have thought Klaus wouldn't hear after the bell, "Uh, what is Baron Wulfenbach doing here?"

Well, that was his cue. At least he had managed to replace the bedsheet with actual clothing. Granted, it was something he'd have worn thirty years ago. In fact, it was something he _had_ worn thirty years ago. 

Of course, if he hadn't left a change of clothing here, he might well have ended up wearing something over a century old. Castle Heterodyne was not well supplied with formal clothing that was not covered in trilobites.

Klaus stepped forward. “I am here to witness the acknowledgment of the new Heterodyne as per our treaty, of course,” Klaus said mildly, in a voice he knew would carry across the courtyard. He turned to Agatha and bowed, formally. “Lady Heterodyne, with this our agreement has ended. the Wulfenbach Empire returns Mechanicsburg to your care.” He paused theatrically, and then looked meaningfully at the skyline. “Perhaps not quite in the condition in which we acquired it. Sir, are you aware that your town is on fire?”

"There has been a slight problem with the firefighters, Herr Baron," was the bland reply. 

"Yes, I heard about that," Agatha said. "It should be resolved. Now, Gil's gone to take personal command of the Wulfenbach forces," and Sturmvoraus with him, Klaus thought wryly, and hadn't _that_ been an unnecessarily difficult sell. "And I understand the Doom Bell should have summoned a lot of monsters to the battle, but we need to get busy. First, I'd like to have Gil's lightning generators up and running as quickly as possible. That should give us one more immediate defense and I think we can use it to solve the Castle's remaining power issues."

The boy who had to be her seneschal shot Klaus a wary look and then focused again on his Heterodyne. "We've had people working on that since he started setting them up. They're _amazing_. We've got about half the melted ones rebuilt with the intact ones as a pattern."

"Mechanicsburg," Klaus said, "has an unusually high population of people who can inspect Spark work and actually repeat it."

"I knew there was a reason I liked this place," Agatha said with a happy sigh. "All right. I'd _like_ to rework the design so they don't _melt_ , but if we don't have time for that, even two or three good shots will help."

At this point a squad of constructs in spidery clanks came over the wall screaming about “death to the witch of Mechanicsburg” in voices that must have been chosen deliberately to be that obnoxious. Which made a change from people and creatures showing up to kill _him_. (Klaus had been somewhat mystified by Sun's sudden interest in the location of East Krumminey.) Agatha leveled Gil’s lightning stick to blast them -- which apparently fused them on the squealing word "die" at a volume that made Klaus almost miss the Doom Bell -- and then resorted to knocking over part of the tower wall on them. She rubbed one ear and turned to look at Klaus and the seneschel with narrowed eyes. “The quicker the better, apparently. How many of these fools can we expect, by the way?”

“Well...” the seneschal said, regarding the crushed and twitching clanks with wide eyes, “the Doom Bell took out most of them, so it’s a safe bet that the remaining ones will be tricky. The Castle --“

“The Castle is nearly out of power,” Agatha interrupted, grimly. “There are a few prisoners working on its main generator, but I don’t know how long --“

“Oh, they’ve completed that, mistress!” the Castle cut in, sounding gleeful. “Just in time, too! I nearly went to sleep in the middle of this lovely battle! And I have good news, as well! It seems my last estimate for how long it will take me to recharge was _far_ too conservative.”

“Last estimate?” the seneschal asked.

Klaus snorted. “The last estimate was four years,” he told them.

“Oh, wow,” the boy said. “Good to know it won’t take _that_ long, then!”

“Indeed, it should only take about three,” the Castle informed them, voice cheerful.

Agatha opened her mouth as though to respond, and then closed it, looking from Klaus to the seneschal silently. Klaus sighed, rubbing his nose.

“...Right,” the seneschal said. “Lady Heterodyne, I think we should get you out of the way before any more invaders find you. The Cathedral is --“

“Farther from here than the roof,” Klaus interrupted, seeing where this was going, “Herr von Mekkhan."

The boy stopped short and regarded Klaus with an expression that made him look even more like Carson. "The roof."

"Your previous Lord Heterodyne," Klaus said, "mentioned lightning collectors." Actually, Bill had mentioned Barry getting _caught_ on the lightning collectors, but that hardly seemed something Klaus needed to disclose at the present moment. More's the pity. "Presumably that system also needs repair. And it should be far enough from the fighting that the invaders will have trouble getting to her.”

"If you can get the generators running again," Agatha said, "then yes, the roof is the next step. Castle, have you found that bit of yourself yet? The very highest roof? We need to get up there, and then if I need more supplies for the repairs I'll send messages."

There were a few grinding noises that may or may not have been stone re-positioning itself. “I _believe_ so, Mistress, although I suppose we won’t know for _sure_ until you get there and tell me!” Without warning, the stones on which Klaus, Agatha, and the von Mekkhan boy were standing shot straight up into the air. The seneschal made a noise that could, potentially, have been a squeak of alarm. Klaus politely ignored it as he crouched to grab the ends of his own platform grimly.

“ _Castle_ ,” Agatha snapped, having crouched to keep her own balance.

“Hm?” the Castle answered, distractedly. “Ah. Here we are. Mistress, are you level with the highest tower now?”

Agatha squeezed her eyes shut for a second, which worried Klaus until he decided it was exasperation rather than fear. She straightened up and stepped off the platform and onto the roof, heading straight for a complex of slender antenna-like spires. Klaus could well believe Barry had gotten hung up on them. "Yes, thank you. But I think I would have preferred stairs."

“Hmph,” the Castle answered, sounding rather put-upon. “If you want to take the inexpedient route, by all means, don’t let _me_ stop you. I’ll just dump you and your companions into the pit trap along with the invaders next time, shall I?”

“Invaders?” von Mekkhan asked, and looked down. Klaus looked too, and could just make out a rather large hole in the court yard where they’d just been standing. There may or may not have been shrieking about a claw coming from it. Klaus sighed and stepped onto Agatha’s platform and then on to the roof himself.

Honestly. This Castle! He hadn’t missed the migraines it caused, that was for sure....

"Oh, this isn't so bad!" Agatha said.

Klaus blinked. “I dearly hope you mean the lightning collectors,” he said, “and not the Castle’s pit traps. I have been in those pit traps, and I assure you, they _are_.”

"Thank you," the Castle said, sounding rather flattered.

"The collectors," said Agatha. "Vanamonde, go see to the generators, please. Castle, don't let him get hurt in the process." She braced one foot against the base and heaved a stuck switch through to the opposite position with a crack. The seneschal gave her a worried look and climbed bravely back onto his platform. "I saw a number of the Castle's traps on the way through," she said, "but _what_ were you doing in the pit traps?"

“Attempting to remain unskewered,” Klaus told her wryly, and hoped she left it at that. The pit trap story wasn’t... well, it was embarrassing more than anything else, and honestly, the less said about the Castle’s enjoyment for dropping unsuspecting “heroes” into traps to “keep them sharp” the better. He walked over to the collectors and eyed them. “...Please don’t tell me that all of the Castle’s current power problems are due to a flipped safety circuit.”

She looked like she wanted to ask more at first but moved over to haul on another breaker. "Well, not _all_ of them. There was also a broken water wheel. Although considering it implied the river water naturally has some fairly alarming downstream properties, I think most of the energy was actually still being extracted, just not stored."

“Ah,” Klaus said faintly, and rubbed his nose. He walked over and hauled a breaker into place himself, hearing it crunch only a little from inevitable rust. He made a mental note to suggest they send someone up here with some oil once everything had calmed down. “I suppose I should be thankful one of our problems was solved with two minions, an impromptu elevator, and... presumably, Gilgamesh’s lightning rod, assuming it will actually channel enough power to give the Castle a boost.”

"Ohhhh, I think it will," Agatha said, pausing to rest after her next breaker and leaning against the collector with an alarmingly dreamy expression. "I don't know if you saw him use it before, but it was _magnificent_." 

Klaus couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. “I did, actually. And I agree, it was… very impressive. Suicidal, but impressive.” And he couldn’t be prouder, but this was neither the time nor the place for discussing Gil. Although, considering how they’d looked at each other, it may well be the _person_. Eventually. (A marriage contract would be an excellent way to firm up an alliance with Mechanicsburg, assuming Agatha really _could_ be trusted not to misuse the very real and terrifying power she had over a good percentage of Europa. Which, actually, was in no way confirmed, however well they had been working together. Gil was enamored, though... the situation definitely needed some careful consideration. Later.) “I meant more that the power generators may take some time to repair, and until then the power they can _generate_ is necessarily limited.”

" _That's_ true. At least they already got started." She frowned and looked at the sky, where a few wisps of cloud were beginning to gather. "I'm not sure I shouldn't have gone to take a look at those first, now."

"We had no idea the lightning collectors would be this easy to repair,” Klaus said, not unkindly. “Better to have overestimated a situation’s urgency than underestimated it, and regardless I feel an initial boost to the Castle is called for. You’ll hardly be restrained from giving it more power later.”

Agatha bit her lip and looked at the sky. "I wasn't sure it had enough power left to do anything to those screaming clanks, let alone help the Castle," she admitted. "I'm hoping the generators can build up enough of a charge to do some good."

Klaus raised an eyebrow. "I suppose there's only one way to find out," he pointed out.

"If we give it time!" But some of them had to have been turned on already, whether the repairs were complete or not. The air lacked the slick charge that had pervaded Mechanicsburg as the earlier storm grew, but the wisps of cloud had grown and there was a fine grey haze darkening the sky even where they weren't. 

"Unless you are absolutely positive there's nothing wrong with this collection system farther down," Klaus said, "you might want to try it before it builds up enough to blow half the generators again."

Agatha pursed her lips. "You're right, that _would_ be a waste. And actually, if it does work, firing it off every time it builds up a moderate charge might supply the Castle more reliably -- and without giving anybody a clear idea what to target."

Having delivered this unexpected outbreak of common sense, Agatha stepped away from the collector array, aimed the lightning stick at it, and fired.

The resultant lightning show would actually have been very pretty if Klaus weren’t _far too close to it_. The lightning shot out of the stick Agatha was holding and directly into one of the lightning collectors, before bursting upwards and out the top, arcing over to the next one, and then next. Soon the entire roof was domed in crackling electricity, giving the impression that they were inside a bright white room before the electricity followed its natural course into the system and dissipated. Agatha’s sizeable mane was standing on end. Klaus’s ears were still ringing from the sound.

“ _What are you doing_ ,” he bellowed, throwing his arms out and absolutely not flailing them in either exasperation or terror. “ _We are still on the roof!_ ”

Agatha was grinning wildly and looking not at all chagrined. "It works!"

“And a _great lot of good it would have done_ if you had gotten yourself _killed_ less than half an hour after being recognized!” Klaus shouted, marching over to her to take the lightning stick away before she got any other bright ideas. “Sweet lightning, who taught you laboratory procedure? No, don’t answer that, I suspect the answer will give me heart palpitations.”

"Dr. Beetle, mostly!" Agatha said, hanging on to the stick so grimly she was nearly dragged off her feet. Klaus grabbed her arm before considering that while the Castle might accidentally electrocute her it would hardly let her fall off the roof. She glowered at him in suspicious outrage. "Now _let me go and give that back_."

“No! Clearly, you cannot be trusted with lightning conductors while still standing on the roof you are about to hit with lightning! Use some common sense!” He gave another tug on the lightning stick, livid. Agatha tugged back. He growled. She bared her teeth back and _yanked_.

The resulting burst of lightning from the stick caught them both by surprise. It shot straight up into the air before, weirdly enough, changing direction and hitting one of the lightning collecters. “Aaaaaah, much better,” the Castle said, cheerfully. “Thank you, Mistress, the collectors are back online, along with their positive charges. I should be able to manage cleaning up all our enemies within the walls now!” A large number of grinding noises and screams began to drift up from below.

Agatha looked down at the rod, which was fizzling weakly. “Oh dear,” she murmured. “I forgot how fragile this is.”

Klaus sighed, and then gave in and started laughing. " _Heterodynes!_ You're all so _surprised_ when something breaks. Or explodes. Or injures you." He shook his head, and then stepped back to check on his clank. The lightning didn't seem to have shorted it out. In fact, it looked rather energized. Interesting....

Agatha, he noticed in his peripheral vision, was looking at him as if she'd forgotten about his knowing Bill and Barry again. With surprise, but also a wistful hunger that puzzled him until he remembered that Punch and Judy could hardly have kept her identity a secret from her _and_ told her very much about her relatives. Even sticking to the stories that weren't already all over the continent, their exploits were fairly distinctive. 

When he looked up from the clank and directly at her, she dropped her eyes and sat down on the roof, taking tools off her belt and out of her pockets to rework the lightning stick. "Well, I... I think it's a good idea to build things you're going to take out on a battlefield to be sturdy."

“So do I,” Klaus agreed, walking back to lean over the lightning stick with interest. "Although in this case, perhaps it would provide you with greater freedom of movement to develop a remote activator and carry a separate object as a weapon." Which had the added benefit of _not being on the roof_ when the stick went off, but he wasn’t going to bring that up in case she decided to be stubborn about it.

Agatha brightened up again at that. "It is already designed with a transmission system. We should be able to piggyback on that."

They got to work on the receiver. After a moment Klaus said, "For some less urgent situation...."

She looked at him inquisitively.

"I'm not bad at telling Heterodyne stories." That got him a startled look. "Or at least, the principal characters usually refrained from throwing things."

Agatha smiled a little at that. "Considering what Adam and Lilith thought about a lot of them, that is a pretty good recommendation." 

Klaus snorted. "I've always been rather amused by the Heterodyne plays, myself, but I can understand the sentiment. I promise only to make outrageous fun of those characters who deserve it."

"Okay, this I have to hear." She looked at him sidelong, a very slightly wicked curl to her mouth. "Lucrezia?"

"Hrm... difficult, actually...." Agatha looked suspicious of this, which made him wonder if Lucrezia had done something particularly absurd in her experience or if she only hoped so. "There _was_ one time a mechanical bird clank fell desperately in love with her and refused to release her hair for the entire campaign...."

Agatha snickered. 

Klaus grinned. "I'll tell you the rest of the story later. Assuming diplomatic relations remain successful, of course."

She snorted. "That's your 'if' instead of worrying about the assorted other armies?"

Yes, actually it was. Although he thought, maybe, it wasn't _too_ much more of a risk. "Obviously Lucrezia and her assorted co-conspirators are going to be a problem, but they're most likely also wrong-footed and may take some time to regroup. As for the rest, do you want a list of how many comparable armies your father and uncle defeated _without bringing theirs_?"

Agatha paused and looked intrigued at this description of the Heterodyne Boys' adventures. "Yes, actually."

"Well. That will _definitely_ take a while."

* * *


End file.
